Black Hills (9781101559116) (29 page)

They rotated twice more before Cormac broke through. He was moving mechanically, without thinking. Dig out a boulder and hold it up for someone to take from him, and then do it again, until a boulder he was trying to pull from the side of his mini-shaft fell away and disappeared. It confused his exhausted mind. He didn't understand where it went, until he heard a cheer coming out of the hole that had been left by the boulder.

Happy voices were calling and hollering. He had broken through the ceiling of the main chamber. He recognized the voice of Lucas calling out that they were all right, and that he was just in time. They had run out of air, one had already died, and three passed out. A few more minutes would have seen them all dead.

Cormac was afraid that his shaft was going to collapse at any time and stopped digging. He explained that Laurie was bringing another crew in through the original shaft.

“Laurie? Did you say, Laurie? I thought I heard you say Laurie.” Lucas was having a hard time believing what he had heard. Cormac assured him that yes indeed; his baby sister was coming to his rescue.

Having removed his shirt that kept getting hung up on sharp-edged boulders, Cormac acquired rope burns while being pulled out with the help of a rope hooked to the hand-crane. He took his crew around to the main shaft, and after directing food and water to be lowered down to the miners, he went to help Laurie.

He was dirty and black from working in what was now being called the air shaft, he took his place in line and helped pass the boulders and buckets of dirt outside. Laurie walked by on the way out on some mission without recognizing him covered in dirt and sweat-made mud, only to return shortly, nearly passing him a second time. She glanced at him, and then looked again.

“Mack!” she exclaimed, rushing to him. “You're exhausted. Get out of here. Go lay down before you fall down.”

He pushed her hands away. “I'm fine, I'm fine,” he said, and kept passing whatever was handed him down the line. The more workers they had in the line, the faster the shaft would be reopened.

They dug the rest of the day and through another night. Cormac was no longer aware of his surroundings. His movements were completely automated. Take what was handed him on the right and pass it to the left, and repeat.

At some point he heard cheers, and people quit handing him buckets and boulders. He thought himself dreaming when he heard Mr. Haplander's voice and felt hands guiding him to somewhere. He knew he was dreaming when he realized he was lying on the grass next to Laurie again.

“I'm sorry,” he told her. “I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I'm sorry.” He mumbled the words over and over until his aches and pains disappeared as he fell into exhausted sleep.

Still on the grass, Cormac awakened seventeen hours later with a pillow under his head and covered with a blanket. The sky was a deep, deep blue with a few puffy white clouds. Laurie was sitting in a chair nearby with her parents and family. Every muscle he had was stiff, and he moaned when he moved.

He had lots of immediate attention, all wearing smiles.

“They didn't want to move us and just let us sleep on the grass where we passed out,” Laurie told him. “I've been awake about an hour. How do you feel?”

Cormac stretched one limb at a time. “Everything still works, how are the miners?”

“We only lost one. If you hadn't come back, we would have lost all twelve.”

“It was a joint effort,” he answered. “You were terrific.”

Her mother and father came to put their arms around her.

“We are very grateful to you and extremely proud of our daughter,” said her dad. “Look at her. When the chips were down, our little girl came through with flying colors. We couldn't be more proud of her . . . and Marcus,” he added.

“Markie was right at the front of the line, swinging that double-jack sledgehammer and pick longer than anybody,” Laurie told Cormac proudly as Marcus exited the mine with Lucas and came to stand beside her.

“My baby brother moved more rock than anybody else in my crew,” she said as she put her arm around him. Pausing momentarily, she looked at Cormac. “You're right, it was a joint effort. We work well together.”

“No, no, no,” she added quickly at the look on his face. “That's not what I meant. I know you and I can't be together. I understand, and I'm okay with it. Unhappy with it, but okay with it. Whoever she is, she's a very lucky woman. I hope I can find someone to feel that way about me. I just meant that we all did really well.”

Cormac breathed a sigh of relief.

He took the Haplanders to the beginning of the cave-in rubble and showed them the marks on the wall that he had noticed previously. “I've had time to think about it and those are scratch marks from the driven steel to set an explosion. If you want to look hard enough, you'll find matching rocks torn out of the walls. This cave-in was no accident, and he was fixin' to do it again when I got here. If Lop Ear and Horse wouldn't have gotten me here so fast, he would have succeeded.”

Taking them to the air shaft, he described how the makeshift dam had been directing the water into the hole and about the tracks of the deformed hoof. He told them of the first time he had found the tracks following some cattle into a stream during the branding roundup.

“The same hoof tracks are all over the corral right now. Most of them are clear tracks, meaning that the others had left before him.”

“That horse belongs to Tex,” Lucas broke in. “I've seen it often enough. He lives in town. We can find him easy enough if he hasn't left.”

“Good,” Cormac said. “Now, let's go back to the front shaft. I have one more thing to show you.”

Removing a white quartz rock from his saddlebag, he broke it into pieces with a nearby pick. The inside was bright white with a vein of lead thickly laced with silver.

“I took this out of the air shaft. I don't know what all the rest of this stuff I been telling you means, I reckoned you could figure it out, but I think I know what this means,” he said, handing each of them a piece of the silver-filled quartz. “Doesn't that mean that maybe you have a very thick vein of silver in that damp wall where you couldn't dig because of it being so damp? I'm thinking someone else found it and wanted to keep you from doing the same.”

“Well I'll be damned, Mack!” exclaimed Mr. Haplander. “You just saved us from making one hell of a mistake. The assays have been dropping, and we thought the mine was petering out. The reason we had gone to Denver was to complete the arrangements for the sale of the mine to some investors from San Francisco who said they knew the strike was about dead, but they wanted to keep working it to see if they could find something by going deeper. Now I see why. They had some inside information from somebody here, and with those tracks, he won't be hard to find. I still have time to stop the sale. Tomorrow would have been too late.

“This also explains our cattle count. It was much lower than expected this year, and now I know why. Whoever the traitor is has been rustling, too. But he's gotten too confident. Thanks to you, Mack, we can follow his tracks right to him. Now that Laurie has a handle on the situation, we sure wish you would stick around.”

“How 'bout it?” Lucas asked him. “You're too good a man to lose.”

“Come on, Mack. I'll be okay, I promise,” coaxed Laurie, smiling.

“Thanks, but no. I've been getting a bad case of trail-itch for some time now; it's time to scratch it and get back on the trail. But thanks for the offer.”

Mrs. Haplander put her hand out to shake. “Laurie told us what happened between you two; I want to thank you for not taking advantage of our daughter. You're a good man. It would have been a pleasure to have you in our family.” Cormac shook her offered hand.

“By the way,” said Mr. Haplander, “we still owe you some wages. I'll put it in your account, along with a good-sized bonus by way of a thank you.”

“Thank you,” he answered, and started for the corral to get Lop Ear and Horse, then stopped.

“Say,” he said. “What happened to my two mountain friends? I kinda lost track.”

Mr. Haplander smiled. “Laurie said those two big ole boys put in a heap a work.”

“They stuck it out until we broke through,” Laurie said, “and then they lit out. They said to tell you thanks, and they still owe you a big favor that they'll return anytime you need it. They said for you to just send up a smoke signal in a breeze headed for the Rockies, and they'll come a runnin'.”

“They also told us,” Mr. Haplander cut in, “that you unlimbered some big ole cannon and chased off some woolies that was fixin' to take their hair. Looks like you've had a busy few days.”

Nothing in his experience had prepared Cormac Lynch for such compliments and accolades. He had found it to be extremely embarrassing and quickly changed the subject to how well Marcus and Laurie had done until someone handed him a large bowl of Duffy's Irish stew. The stew got first priority until it was gone. And then the first lapse in the conversation gave him the chance to say his good-byes and get back on the trail. He took it gladly.

Cormac wondered at the bloodlines of Horse and Lop Ear. They were holding a ground-eating pace, easy to sit with the miles steadily disappearing behind them. The two appeared capable of loping almost endlessly. In reality, they had to have breaks, and he alternated their pace between a lope and a walk, removing all the gear from them for an hour break at lunchtime, and allowing them the opportunity to rest and roll in the grass. It was November month with Indian summer all around. Snow had not yet fallen, and the weather was still warm. The leaves had already traded their shades of green for more beautiful shades of golden browns. God was redecorating.

Montana's mining country was shrinking behind him, the miles melting away. Skirting hilltops rather than cresting them to avoid sky lighting themselves, Cormac remained constantly alert in all directions for other riders or anything that might be a danger. In dry country, dust in the air signaled other movement, but the Great Plains were covered in tall grass as far as the eye could see, with ravines formed by thousands of years of heavy rains cutting into the earth.

A trickle of water running along the ground making a slight indentation on the surface was followed by more water, which, like most humans, follows the path of least resistance. Over time, the indentation became a rut, then a trench, and finally an arroyo invisible from a distance and deep enough to allow a large war party to lie in wait for unsuspecting travelers. This was the same Indian country as when he had first learned his horses were runners. That and his realization that the fate of Lop Ear and Horse lay in his hands were making him more cautious now.

Cormac had seen a good bit of country with his legs wrapped around one horse or the other while looking out between their bobbing-up-and-down ears; the trio enjoyed being on the trail. They enjoyed each other's company, and the horses seemed to enjoy learning what was on the other side of the next hill every bit as much as Cormac.

Frequently, he checked their back trail for other riders and to be aware of the route they were taking. His pa had taught him that the trail looked different looking back than looking ahead. Looking back painted it into his mind so he could find his way back should it became necessary.

Although, his thoughts were frequently on Laurie and Lainey, he was continually evaluating the front trail for ambush possibilities and mentally rehearsing various reactions to different danger situations. He had learned well the importance of a planned response.

His daily drawing practice had become a habit. The next time something threatened him, he wanted to be prepared. He wanted his reactions automatic and unthinking, mentally prepared for the unusual things that usually happen. Sometimes these things happened real sudden-like, and in the seconds or fraction of a second it took to think about what to do, it was too late: death sometimes comes very fast and is very final.

Take that large, dark, inverted
C
that looked like a shadow on the ground in the distance, for instance. Early-morning and late-afternoon shadows set off the highs and lows of uneven ground making the usually unseen seen. If it were actually an arroyo, it could hold several horses or a couple war parties of Indians below the surface of the surrounding countryside, making them invisible to coming travelers such as him.

Knowing the Indians wanted Two Horse dead and his scalp on a lodge pole was unsettling, and that they wanted his horses was disturbing. Two Horse for Christ's sake—utter nonsense, except it wasn't funny. The Indians also wanted Lop Ear and Horse, and he had heard stories of how some Indians mistreated their horses by riding them to death or eating them. He couldn't let that happen. Their lives were in his hands. There would be no more lazy-dozing in the saddle. He would remain vigilant and treat each possible threat as seriously as if it were his last.